INDIA — While the United States bickers over whether abstinence only “education” or comprehensive sex education is best for the youth of the nation, some religious living within the country that gifted the world with the Kama Sutra condemn a televised hug and series of face kisses — and ban a French fashion channel due to obscenity concerns.While it’s been politically fashionable to condemn the French, whose greatest contributions to society may well be fellatio and cunnilingus, deeming its fashion programs obscene seems a bit extreme, yet Fashion TV (FTV) has been banned from Indian airwaves for at least two months, because its content has been determined to denigrate women by India’s Federal Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

The ban took effect this month, meaning that fans of shows such as Midnight Hot, during which the Ministry claims “skimpily dressed and semi-naked models are shown that are against good taste and decency, denigrates women and are likely to adversely affect public morality.”

While annoying, the nation’s response to FTV should come as no great surprise to its corporate controllers, given that in 2001 the right-wing governmental Bhartiya Janata Party threatened precisely such an action.

The latest crackdown on indecency is the second this year, following a government ban of the action-adventure channel AXN in January, due to the broadcast of World’s Sexiest Advertisements, which apparently had precisely the kind of imagery that its title suggested. Once the channel apologized for its transgression and promised never to do it again, India welcomed it back to its television line-up.

Although film and advertising industry professionals within India have protested the government’s penchant for such content-based bans, complaints from politicians and viewers has made officials sensitive on the issue, with Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi claiming that he would act as “moral police” for the nation’s viewing habits, according to local news reports.

Either in spite of or in part because of such limitations on the free discussion of sexuality, India is the hardest hit nation in the world by HIV/AIDS. Nonetheless, recent studies have revealed that 40-percent of all Indian women entirely unaware of the disease. With 5.7 million of the nations’ 1.1 billion citizens infected by the virus, the only continent to suffer more is Africa, which has fewer infections but a higher prevalence rate.

Predictably, AIDS has developed an increasingly feminine face in India, with the same number of women who are ignorant about the disease also being infected by it, including housewives. By comparison, 80-percent of polled men by the National Family Health Survey indicated knowledge of HIV/AIDS. The majority of citizens — and infections — are found in rural areas, where women are considerably less literate than men and husbands who work in the city often bring the disease home after visiting infected prostitutes. Due to the stigma surrounding the illness among those who have heard of it, there is little discussion of it publicly or between married couples.

Ironically, activists believe part of the problem is that many female villagers do not have access to television and are thus unaware of anti-AIDS advertisements — which presumably are more tastefully presented than French fashion shows.